2013/01/28 Minutes Economics Working Group

2013/01/28 Minutes Economics Working Group

2. Slogans for City of London banners – “City parasite within our City”; have been passed to the CoL election campaign group (see Shout outs below)
3. a) Future themes and dates: 1st February – Land Value capture/share or recovering stolen land; (framework for themes?); cover items in the news? – use shout outs instead; 8th February – wealth, what is it and how should it be distributed; HS2? 15th February – Nelio on work. b) EWG Day conference – date to be confirmed at Friern Barnet; Tabernacle Street venue – occupied by former residents of St Paul’s – 52/58 Tabernacle Street, Spitalfields
4. Nothing to report on updates
5. Shout outs: Bishopsgate Institute screening Secret City – looking for venues; chaotic screening on Saturday;
Peter Kenyon (City of London Labour party) working with City reform group; elections in March; Treasure Islands has a lot of information on the machinations of the City of London and the electoral process. Saturday 16th March Occupy/City Reform Group demo.
Recommended: History of Neo-liberalism by David Harvey; Debt, The first 5000 years by David Graeber; Treasure Islands by Nicholas Shaxson; Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett;
Occupy cannot become a political party. GA on Atos disability assessment process – need to focus on the economic framework – as well as the single issue; risk of being used as “rent a crowd”? Must avoid a not invented here attitude; being co-opted for activist action. EWG’s response was first rate to Gbola’s predicament on Friday; need to make space for propositions to be debated and discussed; be wary of special interest groups eg. WWF (backed by Rockefeller) and its infiltration of campaigns.
Meeting at Deloittes on banking – John Kay on the panel – separate ownership of retail and investment banks; why would they do that? credit given to Occupy; separation of banks in prospect. Mark Carney prospective governor of Bank of England – we’re all human subject to pressures and influences. Bernanke – Carney tensions; fractional reserve banking is debated as a result of occupy (here and NY)
Sabine highlighted: Beveridge Lecture series at Toynbee Hall (Nesta CEO Geoff Mulgan yesterday) – http://www.toynbeehall.org.uk/page.asp?section=555 http://www.nesta.org.uk/about_us/our_people

http://www.tackletaxhavens.com/

basic income, no reciprocity?
variety of economic viewpoints and how they’ve developed; is the confusion over fractional reserve banking intentional or are people just confused themselves? themap website to distil these ideas into a format making the information available and understandable to people – to develop policy; NEF book: Where does money come from? Josh Ryan-Collins, Tony Greenham; Richard Werner; Andrew Jackson not regarded as impartial by some; Positive Money analysis is too simple? Interest free money; how is it created and how is it used. Social Credit movement only talks about FRB; Council for Monetary Justice; Margrit Kennedy – Interest and Inflation Free Money; James Robertson newsletter – Joseph Huber – creating new money – NEF online. The History of Money describes a different concept of what we see today in the current banking system; Other books: The Lost Science of Money by Stephen Zarlenga; The Bubble and Beyond – Michael Hudson;
6. Process – on the old occupy website there was a process document – missing from the current site. Need to circulate a copy and post on website
7. Next meeting – Friday 1st February 2013 – “recapture/recover/share the bounty from land